‘Gethsemane’, on Patrick White

Gethsemane at your shoulder as you work,
garden of sleep and torment, the betrayal
of whispers you were born to, outside the frame,
beyond the painter’s bloom and power
the strikes of his marks of black and grey –
both writer and painter, swimming against
a cramped world. But in this house
of aunts and failures and divisions of mind,
it was love that stepped up to the garden:
creator of worlds driven with fire, peopled with
blubber and fuss, with overwhelming puzzlement,
the stunning stillness, the silliness and effort
behind screens of respectable appearance –
you captured the bright scream of the broken
who do not know they are broken,
turned a lamp upon them, open.

Marcelle Freiman’s two books of poetry are White Lines (Vertical) (Hybrid Publishers) and Monkey's Wedding (Island Press Co-op). She grew up in South Africa and lived in London before migrating to Sydney in 1981. Her poetry emerges from her biography, a constantly shifting sense of place, memory and time. She is Associate Professor in creative writing and literature at Macquarie University, and has research interests in creative writing theory and practice, in poetry and postcolonial and transnational literatures.